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The Russian Love Affair With Glass
| Article
# : |
13626 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1988 |
2,095 Words |
| Author
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Louise Sheldon
Louise Sheldon is a free-lance writer on the arts living in
Washington, D.C. A former associate editor of Smithsonian and
an assistant editor of Life, she has written on various
aspects of Russian culture. |
Afanciful play of light, color, and shape in glass objects has always tantalized the Russian craftsman. Glass, as an art form, thrives in the Soviet Union today, where artists are rewarded with state honors and medals for their blown, cut, and engraved artifacts. This fascination with glass has a long history. The Russian imperial court always favored a certain baroque opulence in interior décor. Skilled craftsmen from abroad were imported to teach Russian artisans how to create Venetian glass. But even the czars did not realize that the tradition of Russian glassmaking went back many hundreds of years.
Only at the end of the last century, when excavations in the Kiev region uncovered quantities of cloisonné enamels from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, did people discover the true tradition of Russian glassmaking. In 1907, proof of early manufacture of glass in Russia came to light when an enamel- and glass-making workshop, equipped with furnaces, crucibles, and molds, was uncovered near Kiev's Desiatina Church. Later excavations unearthed handblown, round windowpanes, thinwalled goblets, and wineglasses with glass threading. Colored, double-layered glass artifacts, painted with gold and enamel, from Novogrudok, indicate the advanced state of the art eight hundred years ago. A painted dove set among tiny fir trees found on fragments of gilded violet glass also revealed the existence of a non-Byzantine-influenced native folk art.
Introduction of Christianity
It is now recognized that medieval Kiev was second only to Byzantium among European glass centers; Kiev's cultural advancement was linked to the introduction of Christianity in the tenth century. The simple early furnaces produced not only tableware but also great quantities of colored, opaque glass known as "smalto," used for mosaics and jewelry. Mosaics composed of tiny pieces of colored glass covered floors and walls of Russian cathedrals. These richly colored mosaics served to tell stories from the Bible to an unlettered people.
The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century disrupted Russian life and culture for two hundred years. Whole populations fled from cities and monasteries into the wilderness. Kiev was destroyed, and craftsmen were taken captive and carried off. The production of glass was not resumed to any appreciable degree until the seventeenth century.
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